


Souvenirs

by eirabach



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fic, irrelief fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24133282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: For tumblr user louthestarspeaker's IRrelief prompt "Penelope collects snowglobes for Gordon."
Relationships: Penelope Creighton-Ward/Gordon Tracy
Kudos: 11





	Souvenirs

Parker hates clutter -- a side effect, she suspects, of the ability of aristocratic trinkets to attract both dust and the occasional enterprising and foolhardy burglar -- so it’s simpler to keep them here, hidden away, arrayed on the dresser in her bedroom where no-one but she ever goes.

Ever went, at least, but that’s hardly here or there. This little habit had begun long before that. 

She’s found herself hiding some of the oldest examples when he comes to stay, tucking them safe between layers of lace and silk. Drawers full of little glass secrets that she’s not quite ready to bare.

The first one contains a tiny model of the Golden Gate bridge, and when she shakes it drifts of glitter-snow bank against its towers and settle on the cables. The same cables that had frayed and snapped and sent a dozen unfortunate souls tumbling to an untimely end. It would have been more -- should have been more -- were it not for a boy with a sunshine smile and a little yellow submarine.

She’d seen it on the holo in her Los Angeles hotel room, watched, jaw tight and heart thundering, as Four’s snub nose had dived, again and again, and never mentioned, afterwards, the way she’d gripped at her pillow as the road crumbled and the ocean foamed. Never examined the panic nor the urge, sudden and all consuming, to slip into the tacky gift shop she knows to be a front and pocket the snow globe as she tackles the ‘owner’.

And so it becomes a habit, and she doesn’t examine that much, either. Not after Atlantis (a terribly painted Greek village), nor after the plasticky Aztec temple. Not after the dam, not after the seaquakes, not after the burning oil rig or Venice or Perth or Arran. Just hunts out a reference in glass and polymer to lay out on her dresser, to shake when the nights are too long and too dark and the comms are too busy to sleep. 

Nights where he’s there, and she’s here, and the world and all its disasters lie between them. 

Nights like this, nights when even though she’s _allowed_ , now, to fret and to worry, she daren’t. Daren’t let her hands shake for fear they might never stop. So instead she chooses her favourite -- Venice, antique -- and shakes that instead. Pours her worry and her fear and her pride, _so much pride_ , into the action until her wrist hurts and the painted canal blurs.

She watches the glitter settle, the waters calm, and waits.


End file.
